By Eco-Rep, Morgan Blanchard ’15

On Saturday, November 15th, a group of seven Eco-Reps along with Sustainability Director, Christina Erickson, traveled to the fifth annual Eco-Rep Symposium held at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. The event began with a sit-down lunch of mindful foods (no meat!) and a chance to get familiar with the events of the day. On the name tag of every Eco-Rep, there was a different animal to sort us into various groups. Dogs, frogs, unicorns, dolphins, and many others were split up to interact with Eco-Reps from others schools. After our keynote speaker, Suzanne Shaw of the Union of Concerned Scientists, gave us a presentation on how to become Climate Superheroes, the first session of panels and presentations began. The options varied from case studies, where students could learn about different schools’ Eco-Rep programs, to panels about how to engage more students on campus in sustainable practices, to skill building about tracking environmental impacts. Many of us attended different presentations, and therefore came away with a variety of knowledge to bring back to our own campus.

After the first round of presentations, we were assigned different rooms based on our animals to engage in roundtable conversations about various different environmental topics. Many schools, we found, were ahead of the game in sustainable practices, while others were just starting their sustainability program. After rotating a few times to engage in discussions with different students from different schools, the second round of presentations began. The ideas were the same: case studies, panels, and skill building, but the topics varied. They included the life cycle of recyclables, how composting works, and how to engage the student body. Again, we gathered different information in order to further enhance our knowledge to bring back to Champlain.

As the day came to a close, there was a raffle, a group picture, and words of encouragement to keep enhancing and setting an example for sustainable practices. Overall, it was a fun day to experience and we hope to attend again next year. We are looking at different ideas to implement in the future, such as Meatless Mondays and weighing our food waste to get a  visual idea of how much we’re really wasting on a day to day basis. We have a wide range of knowledge to utilize and can only go up from here.

(photo courtesy of Tufts University)